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Book Reviews

‘The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.’ Alan Bennett

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.” ― Franz Kafka

Monday, 10 September 2012

Genie and Paul - Natasha Soobramanien

Genie and Paul is the debut novel from Natasha Soobramanien. Taking
the French 18th Century classic ‘Paul et Virginie’ by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre as inspiration, the
author has crafted a story about love of people and of places. It is May 2003,
and a body is washed up on a beach on Rodrigues, the sister island of
Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. Six weeks earlier, in March 2003, a tropical
cyclone hit Rodrigues, and it wrought destruction. On the same night, in
London, twenty-six-year-old Genie Lallan wakes up in hospital, having collapsed
after a night in a club with her beloved brother Paul, who has now vanished. It
seems that her more innocent nature has been tarnished in part by her
drug-taking brother.

Through the numerous glimpses
into their pasts as the story unfolds, we discover that Paul and Genie moved to
Britain from Mauritius, and whilst Genie takes well to her new home, Paul just aches to
be back in Mauritius.

The narrative is composed of
three sections, relating first to Genie, then Paul, and finally them both.
Within these sections, the stories from the present and the past, which recall
various episodes in the lives of the two siblings, build to give the reader a
fascinating, layered picture of them both, and of some of those around them.

Often a character is asked by
another to tell them their story, and I found this storytelling aspect a
wonderful and particularly appealing element of this novel.

Genie and Paul reads like a fresh, original story of love, of
shared memories and places that always feel like home to us. Soobramanien
offers us a novel where the sense and evocation of place is key, and she writes
with great insight as to how our bonds with those we are closest to shape our
lives.